introduction

the
forest

The huge industrial forest is relatively young, being
only about 150 years old and it is entirely artificial.
It occupies an ancient marshy and unsalubrious plain,
where sheep were raised.

As well as being the origin of the forest,
the law of 1857 accelerated the decline of the shepherds
and flocks of sheep,
whose territory was taken by pine trees. In 1862, there
were 852,000 beasts, this had reduced to 298,000 in 1890.

life
with the forest

The Gascogne
Forest extends over 1 million hectares, 75% of the forest
in Aquitaine. It is the largest area of resinous forest
in the EU, and covers 45% of the land area of the three
departments of Aquitaine: Gironde, Landes and Lot-et-Garonne.
In Les Landes, the forest extends over of 627,000 hectares,
about 67% of this department’s surface area.

The Gascogne Forest is essentially private: less than
10% of the area belongs to the State and local authorities.
The rest is the property of foresters. In fact, there
are about 73,000 proprietors in the Landes massif, who
own about 820,000 hectares. (In the Aquitaine region,
there are over 350,000 proprietors.)

Maritime pines were mostly
planted from the middle of the 19th century
under the drive of the Napoleonic administration, in order
to give life to a department then considered as disadvantaged
and abandoned. The forest provided a way out of the extreme
poverty and ill-health of this region.

Railways
gave access through the often otherwise inaccessible hinterland
in the forest, as well as providing industrial transport
for the forest products.

With the vast forest, the landscape changed dramatically,
particularly in the Grande Lande. Instead of settlements
surrounded by moorland stretching to the distant horizon,
people lived in clearings surrounded by forest. Even today,
this area is often called Indian country by those from
the coast or from bigger towns, with the names of villages
often unrecognised, even in towns just 25 km away.

During the 19th century, Les Landes was a
region of much tenant farming, a method of indirect farming.
There was a contractual engagement by which the tenant
farmer worked property belonging to an owner, to whom
the tenant gave a part of the harvest: a fifth, a quarter
or even half. In Chalosse,
tenant farming applied mostly to wine, maize, wheat and
potatoes, while in La
Lande it was based on rye, maize, millet, sarrasin
[buckwheat, as used in Brittany to make crepes] and above
all, resin. In fact, although the main afforestation of
La Lande started in the middle of the 1850s, the first
substantial sowings started twenty years or so before.
Resin
tapping, le gemmage, constituted a principal
activity in the rural world of the Grande Lande.

forest
industries

By the 19th century, there were two main ways
to exploit the forests - lumber and resin extraction.
Lumber production still continues, but the resin
industry ended finally in 1992, overwhelmed by greater
and cheaper foreign production, and substitution by fossil
fuel products.

The tree
used is the Pinus pinaster, commonly
known as the maritime pine. Other names
include Landes pine, Bordeaux pine, pitch pine, pinaster,
Corte pine. Another race of maritime pine is the mésogéen
(pinus mesogeensis).

This tree is adapted to a gentle, wet climate and is
normally found a short distance of the sea, especially
in France. It has a fast early growth, is mature at 40
to 50 years. It is bisexual, each tree bearing both male
and female parts.

For more detailed information about the structure and
growth of a tree, together with photographic illustrations
taken using felled maritime pines, visit our dendroclimatology
briefing document.

lumber

Afforesting the land originally took place by allowing surrounding
pines to seed a plot naturally (au naturel). The result
is trees growing randomly, both in terms of size and placing.[1]
The other method of afforestation is by artificial sowing, either
of seeds or of seedling plants or cuttings.

But first, the
land is drained by digging ditches so the first 30 cm of soil
is dry. The ditches are generally dug at the edges of planted
areas. Thus, every field and forest section is surrounded by a
ditch, with the ditches often separating different properties.
Of the land used by the Landes forest, 40% has been drained.

In
the 1960s, there was a technical revolution in maritime pine forestry.
The first tests with phosphorus-containing fertiliser started
at Mimizan at the end of the 1950s. Then tree planting became
systematic - ploughing and sowing in rows, accompanied by an initial
fertilization, became current practice. This was, and still is,
proceeded by the land being cleared and cleaned. Generally a maximum
of 200 smaller tree stumps is allowed per hectare, and the undergrowth
is also removed. When the land preparation is completed, the ground
being fertilised and ploughed. Fertilising the land increases
tree production by up to 73%, and reduces the time until final
felling to 25 years, from 40 or 50 years.

From the 1960s,
the direct drilling technique, where 2 to 3 kg of pine seeds are
sown to a hectare, was the principal method of replanting forest
land. Then, in the 1980s started the planting of seedling pines
previously raised in seedbeds.[2] Generally,
1,200 to 1,500 seedlings are planted to each hectare. Today these
two techniques, seed-drilling and planting seedlings, are equally
used by the tree growers, with a small proportion of the Landes
forestry still grown au naturel.

Nowadays,
about 50% of forestry is planted using seedling trees or grafted
cuttings, often genetically improved. One improvement is crossing
the maritime pine with that from Corsica.

During the 25-year
growing cycle of the forest, the foresters must thin the planting
4 or 5 times, the first clearance removing about 30% of the seedlings
planted [3]. Other periodic tasks are
clearing undergrowth and stripping branches, both of which give
the growing trees space and light. Branches are also cut from
the lower parts of the tree to prevent the development of knots,
which lessen the value of the timber.[4]

You can see a typical machine at work in the photos (left
and above right). A grab is attached to the tree, and the tree
is then sawn off below that level. The tree is then shunted through
the grab, stripping its branches. The grab then shifts the tree
back and starts cutting the trunk into suitable sized logs.

The final cut of the trees, felling them to the ground, is done
after 25 or more years of growth, when this is done being dependant
on the girth (circumference) of the tree trunk 1.30 metres from
the ground. Traditionally, felling is done by hand, but earlier
thinning cuts are generally done with machinery that enables the
trunks to be cut to standard lengths.

firefighting

The
Landes forest consists of nearly a million hectares of maritime
pines, a tree species of high inflammability and combustibility.
After large fires of 1942 to 1947 when about 540,000 hectares
were devastated, the forest owners and the firemen joined to fight
this expensive and dangerous problem. Since 1924, forest owners
formed fire defence syndicates: Defense of the Forests Against
Fire (D.F.C.I.). Each owner pays a subscription of about 3 €
(euro) per hectare that helps provide some look-out stations.

lookouts are ensured using
forty towers spread evenly dispersed over the whole territory.
They are manned by professional firemen who ensure proper vigilance
from top of these pylons.

tracks: although
there is a network of 13,900 km of D.F.C.I service roads throughout
the forests, it is still insufficient; the optimal density is
50 km per 10,000 hectares, or more than 45,000 km.

drainage
channels and ditches: their installation enables a more
solid ground. Moreover, the creation of paths by the ditches facilitates
the access for fire engines to the fire site. Since 1947, the
DFCI associations have dug 23,000 km of ditches.

water
points: the more there are, the faster fires can be fought.
They are consisted drilled bores, reserves using brooks or lagoons,
covered ponds and tanks. The aim is to have a water point for
every 500 km2. There are currently1,200 water points.

signs:
mark the tracks in order to help the firemen move about. Some
8000 traffic signs mark out the Landais forest.

fire
guard: water tanks pulled by tractors or lorries are
available for disaster victim
communes to avoid a possible resumption of the fire.

After
the huge fires of the 1940s, larger clearings were also instigated,
usually created as maize fields, to provide extended fire breaks.

transforming
the timber

There
are two main ways of transforming the timber from the felled trees
into useable products. These methods depend on the quality of
the timber.

The good quality, larger logs are used to make
building framework timbers, plywood, parquet flooring, panelling,
furniture.

The poorer quality wood is sent
to the pulping industry as the essential raw material for making
particle boards or paper pulp. The wood is poorer quality for
various reasons: its small diameter having come from thinning
or from the tree top, defects such as lack of straightness, knots,
cracks, or deterioration by mushrooms or wood-eating insects.

Because
maritime pinewood is so resinous, it is more resistant to rotting,
particularly as the result of damp. Thanks to this property, this
wood can be used in window frames and other places where it is
intermittently wet (for instance, from rain) without being treated.
Some strains of these highly resinous trees are called pitch-pine.
Boats made from pitch-pine are well-known to last well at sea
with minimal preservation treatments.

resinous
and other forest products

In plantings that
are purely pine, natural regeneration is controlled
and organised by cutting 4 metre-wide strips empty of
trees. In the case of more densely planted and mixed
tree stock, the width of the empty strips alternating
with the trees is often less from 1 metre wide, but
some may be up to 8 metres wide.

• The planting
period extends from mid-September to mid-May, but planting
early is always preferable.
• The planting density per hectare varies from
1,200 stems (in dry moors) to 1,600 stems (in wet moors).
Planting using improved material, such as first generation
cuttings, gives increases in volume by 15% in volume
and straightness by 25%. Overall, cuttings grow twice
as well as trees grown from seeds.
• Nowadays, cuttings are grown and planted as
container plants, often made of turf or peat so the
roots do not have to be disturbed. Plants with naked
roots are now little used.

• The
first commercial thinning removes about 30% of the originally
planted trees, after between 10 to 15 years, depending
on the land’s fertility.
• Historically, trees are finally felled after
between 50 to 65 years growth. There will then be about
220 to 300 trunks per hectare, which gives a timber
harvest of close to 250 m3 per hectare.
• Computer-assisted studies recommend a commercial
cycle where there are 400 trees per hectare which are
felled after forty years growth.

Measuring the tree’s volume (m³) :
The volume of a tree requires two operations:
• the measurement of its circumference at 1,30
m from the ground
• the estimate of its commercial height, as well
as its circumference when it will be felled.
The volume is calculated using the truncated cone formula
[5]. However, the forestry industry
produces tables that have done the calculations necessary,
based on the circumference and height of the tree.